Witnessed something really interesting this morning as I wandered round the garden with my first Sunday cup of coffee: there was one lonely bumblebee out, quite small, and it patronised our lovely broom. I took a step closer to observe it. It shunned the fully opened flowers -- bright yellow-red caves of nectar glory -- and instead went for the blobby half-opened ones. It landed, did a little dance, or rather trample, on the lower petal "bubble", and suddenly, the bubble burst, the stamen sprung up and a little puff of pollen blew against the bee and into the air, settling gently on the open flowers underneath. Genius!
Seem to be coming down with a colleague's cold so am staying well wrapped up inside today. Have been procrastinating (should be doing paperwork for work) and instead been reading a brilliant 27-page thread on one of the British allotment forums called George's Shed. George is a retired builder and hoarder, a Lincolnshire legend in his 77th year who lives for his plot, and his crazy, two-storey, Tango-coloured shed made out of scrap and filled with crap, and his home-made compost steriliser that also doubles up as a pastie oven, and his self-engineered greenhouse on rails, and who has, despite double hernia operations and diabetes, abseiled down church steeples for charity. George is a local hero and has luckily found, in "A. Fallowfield", a sympathetic plot neighbour and chronicler.
No comments:
Post a Comment